A major search is underway for Oliver O'Grady, the elusive Limerick priest who was deported to Ireland 10 years ago after being jailed for sexually abusing two boys. American law firm Manly, McGuire and Stewart now want to serve the defrocked Irish priest with papers for a civil action on behalf of his alleged victims.

The firm has hired a private detective to track down the Limerick man who has been reported to be living in Limerick, Dublin and also Holland, and may now be residing in a hostel in Dublin city center.

Patrick Wall, one of the U.S. representatives of the law firm, is a former Roman Catholic Priest and Benedictine monk, and is an expert on the abuse crisis in the U.S. Catholic Church where he has been consulted on more than 200 cases of clerical abuse in the United States.

Wall has been pursuing the alleged Irish child abuser for over a year and recommends he should be placed in a 'locked-down psychiatric facility, where he won't pose a danger to children.' Wall describes O'Grady as 'the Hannibal Lector of the clerical world.'Last year O'Grady was discovered working with children in Holland and disappeared shortly afterwards. Now private detectives are on his trail.

Grady was the subject of the 2006 Academy Award-nominated documentary Deliver Us From Evil. O'Grady said he wanted the film to serve as the "most honest confession of [his] life." He detailed how he preyed on children. He claimed church officials knew about his abuses but protected him by moving him from parish to parish.When questioned whether his bishop knew that there were claims that he had abused children in 1976 and before, O'Grady confirmed this and that the diocese responded by moving him to another parish.

Representatives of the U.S. law firm arrived in Dublin last week in a bid to serve O'Grady with new lawsuits of alleged child abuse in a Californian diocese.

The firm plan to serve O'Grady with civil lawsuits relating to the alleged abuse of three young boys and two young girls, from two different families, in the Californian diocese of Stockton.

O'Grady returned to live in the Ireland in 2001 after being deported from the United States convicted on four counts of lewd and lascivious acts on two males. He served half of his 14-year prison sentence, but in his depositions he admitted to the rape, molestation and abuse of over 20 children from 1973 onwards.

This summer O'Grady was due to receive a pension worth $100,000, or $800 a month upon reaching his retirement age.